There appears to be a fascination surrounding these women as many from the mainstream society wonder what kind of women would enter a relationship with an ‘undesirable’ man such as a yakuza member. Little empirical and academic information has been gathered about women married to yakuza members. But I would say that the number of female members is probably close to zero.”
From what I’ve heard, there used to be some female yakuza bosses during the 1940s to 1950s… so about 60 years ago. There used to be official female members in the past, but today there’s no statistics on the subject. “We haven’t really conducted any research on this so we can’t say there aren’t any with certainty. Official research into this field, for reasons mentioned in the previous chapter, has been little to non-existent statistics and official reported figures in this area as another retired marubo officer had explained are scarce: I’d been in the police force for a long time but in the end, no matter how long you search there’s hardly any female bosses. About 10 people maybe? It was originally her husband’s group, but then her husband passed away and she took over. She’s passed away now, but I did meet her long ago. R: Yes, she was the boss of a tekiya group. But once while I was still working as a police officer, I did meet a female boss. I: Is it true that there are few to none female yakuza members? A retired marubo police officer in Tokyo shared with me his personal experience with a female ‘godmother’: Yet this complete and absolute dismissal of their existence may perhaps be a bit too hasty. It’s probably just in the world of films. Similarly, an interview with an anonymous (male) oyabun reveals that “ probably aren’t any onna-oyabuns today. And there was no longer female gang leaders”. However as times have changed and the yakuza itself has changed, modern researchers have generally come to the conclusion that these numbers have waned, painting an entirely different picture in the world of today: “These women were clearly integrated into the structure of a crime ‘syndicate’ and more than once engaged in the ritual of the exchange of cups of sake that sealed their ties of vassalage. In the years before and after World War II, documented cases can be found on the “many female delinquents, female gurentai, and female yakuza” with famous female oyabuns ruling in the areas of Yokohama and Tokyo. Back in the feudal times of the Edo era where gambling was the primary activity of the yakuza’s ance stors, female gamblers were a common sight and therefore there was a greater possibility for a woman to take control of her own crew of gamblers. Though rare today, they were not unheard of in history.
1 internationally) have caused many to wonder whether such female bosses truly exist in the yakuza society or whether they are fictive creations and fabrications of popular culture.įurther reading on this subject would reveal that there have indeed been real cases of women who can be described as onna-oyabuns.
A general lack of media coverage on this ‘phenomenon’ and an attraction for popular media to portray such onna-oyabuns (namely The Yakuza Wives series in Japan and the character of O-ren Ishii in Kill Bil l: Vol. There appears to be in the modern age amongst the members of mainstream Japanese society a belief in the ‘myth’ of the onna-oyabun or the ‘female godmother’ in the yakuza underworld. This research further explores the ways in which these women have adapted to their set circumstances by creating a parallel shadow subculture, an exclusively female ‘sub-subculture’ within the yakuza itself in which they create a sense of solidarity, pride, and confident identities by adopting and mimicking the yakuza rituals and customs as their own. …Unlike Western mafia wives, yakuza wives have remained outside the sphere of criminal activity in this organized crime structure, remaining in the passive emotionally and financially supportive role. The following has been excerpted from her work, which can be read in its entirety here.
Being fully bilingual, she herself conducted and translated interviews for her masters thesis ‘Outsiders Amongst Outsiders’: A Cultural Criminological Perspective on the Sub-Subcultural World of Women in the Yakuza Underworld”. Interested in the phenomenon of organized crime, she decided to focus on the topic of women in the yakuza – a subject about which little has been formally studied.
Born and raised in Tokyo, Rie Alkemade holds a masters degree in Global Criminology from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.